This article examines the transformation of clothing manufacturing in China with a focus on institutional support, technological upgrading and global production chains. The evidence shows that reforms and integration into global production chains has rapidly expanded China’s exports but it has...

The findings show that the incidence of non tariff measures (NTMs) in ASEAN is moderate in comparison with other regions of the world. The econometrically-estimated ad valorem equivalents also seem comparable with other countries. The challenge is to design NTMs so as to maximize their...

This paper investigates the effects of the formation of free trade agreements (FTAs) on trade disputes. We construct a unique and comprehensive dataset on inter-country trade disputes from 1995 to 2007. The dataset covers 110 countries and 1130 trade disputes. We find that the incidences of...

Korea’s trade with most of its 46 free trade agreement (FTA) partner countries has been expanded continuously. Its FTA utilization ratios were as low as 20% before 2010, and some suspicions regarding the benefits of FTA were raised, despite the government’s active promotion. But Korea...

This paper provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the effects of one-sided tariff cuts on firms’ export product scope. The theoretical model explicitly incorporates cost of management in addition to the commonly used production cost. The analysis predicts that the home country’s...

In November 2012, the leaders of the ASEAN+6 countries agreed to launch a new FTA negotiation called the "Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership" (RCEP). In this paper, we conduct stocktaking studies of ASEAN's own FTA and five existing FTAs with 6 dialogue partner countries, to identify...

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the success of progressive services liberalization under the ASEAN China FTA (ACFTA). First, we calculate the level of commitments by applying the Hoekman Index. Second, we compare the ACFTA 2nd Package with the ACFTA 1st Package and examine the additional...

ASEAN has established mutual recognition arrangements (MRAs) on eight professional services. This paper assesses the progress of these arrangements’ paying special attention to the (i) regional and national implementation, (ii) national regulatory changes, and (iii) utilization of these...

ASEAN Economic Ministers signed the Agreement on the Movement of Natural Persons (MNP) in 2012. This is a new instrument potentially facilitating the free flow of goods, services, investment, and skilled labour, thus contributing to the establishment of an ASEAN single market and production...

This paper empirically decomposes trade creation effects of regional trade agreements (RTAs) into those due to the tariff reduction effects and due to non-tariff barrier (NTB) removal by using the most disaggregated tariff-line level trade data in a large number of countries in the world....